


Jack of All Trades

by Tierfal



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a connoisseur of the unspoken, Jack can be a little dense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jack of All Trades

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through S3: Children of Earth.

Jack is tremendous.

Ianto used to find it a little bit scary, at the start—Jack is undefinable. Jack is everything and everywhere at once, and he flouts the rules on principle. He is unstoppable, and he will not be contained.

Ianto has been blinded before, but he sees things, when the wind is southerly. He sees the weight of an undiscovered eternity on Jack's shoulders, and he sees the weight of what's already been done. He doesn't know how many years this man has lived—Jack has always fed them numbers, and they've always waited for a lottery that never comes. It's how things are. Perhaps Jack is too complicated to be ensconced in words. Perhaps the language of _impossible_ wouldn't translate well.

Ianto finds Jack fascinating for all of this—for the inherent defiance of categories; for the shattered barriers and the thousand questions with their millions of answers. Ianto thrills in every paradox. Jack is more exhausted than any of them can imagine, but he doesn't sleep. Jack's eyes are ancient and weary, but they light up and twinkle, and he's always the first one out the door. Jack laughs the longest and grins the brightest and makes them all forget that he is more than just a man. Jack touches and kisses and holds, but when someone reaches for him, he always shies away.

Jack gives, though, despite himself. Jack radiates. Jack is too great for skin and bone to stifle, and he gives unconsciously. He is Torchwood's owner, tying leashes, pulling strings. He's its king. He's its battery. He's its lifeblood and its throughline, and he's its spirit, personified.

Jack is their mentor, the one who knows what 'sonic' means; the one who guides their hands to fill the puzzles in. He's their friend, the friend who listens, nods, and tries to help; who never shares; who seeks no recompense. He's their father—he shepherds them, critiques them, tries to teach them right from wrong. He welcomes them with all their flaws, and he dies for them, when he has to. He asks only for their trust.

Ianto is a young man who has felt old some mornings, some evenings, some starless nights, and has wondered at the magnitude of Jack's resolve. Ianto is a young man who has seen things most people wouldn't dream, most people wouldn't nightmare; things that sit heavily on his shoulders; things that make him think he can begin to understand. Ianto is a young man who has learned the hard way that the universe is vast, is awful, is endless; is marvelous, magnificent, and cruel; is breathtaking and terrible like the man who faces it at every turn.

Ianto is no Achilles, and he would not trade their war for lifetimes of peace. He is a product of this world, of the world that has been given him, of the world he has embraced, and he grudges it nothing. It, like Jack, has given; and it, unlike Jack, takes in exchange.

Ianto finds it funny, verging on hilarious, that for all his talk of limits and backwardness and twenty-first-century mindsets, Jack doesn't realize that this—that all of this—is what "I love you" means.

It means a universe of things, but it means _Thank you_ most of all.


End file.
